The project

Keeping the Red Record: The Project

The Racial Violence Archive (RVA) will gather and share information related to racist violence in U.S. history. The collection currently focuses on terroristic acts (i.e., intimidation, violence, and reprisal used to create fear and control behavior) targeting black Americans in the 20th century U.S. South but will expand to incorporate other aspects of race-related political violence as the project continues.

The RVA incorporates and extends related collections, most notably national data on lynching compiled by historical and contemporary activists and scholars. By keeping what Ida B. Wells (1895) called "The Red Record," further documenting patterns of racist violence from the era of lynching and since, and making data, research, and engagement more accessible, the RVA aims to support scholarship, teaching, and advocacy addressing legacies of racist violence.

Event Records

The RVA's event database compiles previously published accounts and original research in a digital archive. This collection of collections includes event details 'scraped' from various sources, including newspapers and periodicals, academic works (e.g., compilations), organizational records (e.g., SNCC, NAACP), affidavits, and government reports.

Collection efforts began with a focus on the states of Mississippi and North Carolina in the Civil Rights Movement period (ca. 1955-1975), documenting nearly two thousand incidents of violence – murders, assaults, bombings, cross-burnings, police brutality, etc. – in those states over these two decades. Data collection is expanding to include other U.S. states and regions, and to include earlier 20th century events, through development of a project network.

The archive will inevitably remain incomplete. Many events and likely most non-fatalities are poorly documented, and histories of racist violence are not reducible to discrete events. While the collection will undercount incidents and remain limited in demographic, geographic, and conceptual terms, we aim to develop the most comprehensive and accessible record of race-related political violence.

Acknowledgements

Original support for this research was provided by a collaborative National Science Foundation Grant to study “Anti-Civil Rights Enforcement in Mississippi and North Carolina, 1955-1975." Additional support for the Racial Violence Archive was provided by The University of California Center for New Racial Studies, a Multi-Campus Research Program.​

Related Digital Projects

The Racial Violence Archive is one of many digital projects facilitating further reckoning with legacies of racist violence in the U.S., within other nations, and internationally. Learn more at the project sites below (click to open web page):